Search engines on the internet enable users to quickly locate a desired internet site, subject, good, or service. Large databases are often used to connect a search query with a desired result. For example, vertical search engines, such as shopping search engines, rely heavily on a product database. When a user searches for a desired product, such as an Acme Products Inc. 10× Zoom Camera 350i, that product is located in the product database to provide the user with detailed information regarding the product. However, most users do not provide the entire product's name to a search engine. This can make it more difficult to locate in a database, requiring more complex and timely searches.
One approach to provide better search results is to expand a database with “synonyms” of product names that then match the query, such as various portions of the full product's title. However, many users often enter information that is not even part of a product's actual name. For example, the hypothetical new Acme Products camera used in the example above may have the ability to take pictures in infrared wavelengths. A user may learn this feature and enter a search query such as “Acme camera infrared”, hoping to find out more information about the Acme 350i.
Providing an exhaustive list of descriptions of each product in a database can be laborious and expensive. In addition, significantly increasing the number of entries in a database to cover each possible product description can cause an exponential increase in the amount of computing time needed to search the database. This can limit the usefulness of using databases to respond to search queries.